Lights Will Guide You Home
by cupid-painted-blind
Summary: Three sisters react in three ways to one event. Part Three, Narcissa. ::In this moment, Cissy hates Bella.::
1. wreath

**lights **will **guide **you **home**

wreath  
_ (the shorter story)_

Bellatrix stumbles into the foyer, splattered with blood, sweat, mud, and tears. The blood and sweat she claims, the tears she won't see. There's a large gash on her calf, staining the bottom of her robes, from a thorn or a misplaced spell or a knife or her own clumsiness. She doesn't know, or care. Lacking the strength to stand straight, she slides down against the wall, breathing heavily, leaving a streak of something against the wall.

Her husband will not be home tonight, and she's glad. It's better that he doesn't see her like this.

It's not that things have all gone wrong, it's that they haven't gone right. She glances to the side, out the still-open door, into the starlight, and thinks that it really ought to be raining. That would just make this more... lyrical.

Her father is dead, four hours this very second, and she refuses to believe that she's grieving. He's a dead man and a cruel man, and she hated him in life. She's more concerned with the still-bleeding gash on her leg and the frighteningly absent state of her wand than about the dead man lying in her own house.

He stumbled to her, some six hours ago, half-crazed, begging forgiveness for some wrong he had committed. If she hadn't been planning to leave anyway - a mission, a task set to her by her master - she wouldn't have let him in. But she simply opened the door and ignored him, gathering necessary materials and making sure everything was ready. By nightfall, she was leaving.

She hadn't quite made it to the door, when her father reached out from the sofa, clutched her arm and looked her straight in the eyes. "Why do you hate me?" He had whispered, "What did I do wrong?"

And Bellatrix hadn't had an answer ready. Instead, she had clutched her wand tighter and tried to pry his fingers off her arm. But he wouldn't let go, insisting that he'd made some mistake, insisting that she explain it to him. Finally, she looked right back at him with all the intensity of a proper Black woman, and said -

But of course, she's in pain now, clutching her calf, and of course, she did what was required of her - killed some woman who was affiliated with some resistance member. Names didn't matter to her, anyway - just a face. But the problem was - when she looked at the dead woman, she could only see Daddy's eyes and Daddy's nose and Daddy's mouth, curled into a sneer or a look of horror or pleading with her, begging for an answer, begging for forgiveness.

The Dark Lord will forgive her, she thinks, for losing control, for torturing that lady. After all, she did what she was supposed to do, and killed the Nameless Woman. And if he requires an explanation, she'll give one, but there's no point in telling him everything if he doesn't ask.

"What did I do wrong?" Her father had asked of her.

And she'd had only one answer to give, cold and bitter, and very, very Black - "Everything. You did everything wrong."

The Dark Lord will forgive her.


	2. ballad

**lights** will **guide** you **home**

ballad  
_(the lighter path)_

_Dear Mrs. Tonks,_

_We would like to inform you of an outstanding balance on the funeral arrangements made by a Mrs. Lucius Malfoy, for one Cygnus Black. She has informed us that you will be paying one-third of the balance. The amount owed by you is 263 galleons and fourteen sickles. Please pay this as soon as possible. If complications arise, we can be contacted at -_

How very Narcissa, and how very cruel.

Andromeda shakes, the parchment in her hands damp with sweat and dew, the ink beginning to smear and the edges beginning to curl. Unshed, unwanted, unacknowledged tears brim her eyes as she struggles to accept -

Struggles to understand -

_funeral arrangements...for one Cygnus Black_

Her father is_ dead_, gone, buried or cremated or forgotten, and more than not even tell her, they have the gall to _bill_her for the funeral? Perhaps this is Narcissa's idea of vengeance, or maybe charity (after all, if not for the letter, Andromeda might never have known her father was dead). Andromeda knows well that her sister can easily pay for whatever expenses arise, and Narcissa also knows that Andromeda cannot.

Such is the life of the outcast and the Daily Prophet photographer - she has enough, but not extra.

A tear - huge, splotchy, messy, salty, hot - falls on the paper, and she realizes that her fingers have a vice grip on the scroll, the ink is already nearly unreadable.

_Our condolences for your loss_.

It makes her sick. Behind her, as if from far away, Ted comes home and begins rummaging around. She notices, enough to clench her fist and ruin the parchment completely, but not enough to turn around or check her tears - falling faster now, harder, angry or sad or hurt or shocked. She did not think to write down the amount she owes. It doesn't matter. They'll send her another letter tomorrow, another reminder, another stab in an already-sore wound.

Narcissa was supposed to be the good one - Ted comes into the Kitchen, asks her a question about the dinner that's cooking on the stove in front of her, or maybe about Dora, or maybe about how her day was (she isn't listening) - Narcissa was supposed to be the _nice_one, the one who liked to hear fairy tales and play dress-up - Ted puts a hand on her shoulder -

And then she screams.

An hour later, Ted has taken Dora to his parents' house - he explained to them long ago the whole story about Andromeda's family - and she is sitting on the couch, sobbing uncontrollably, pent-up fury and pent-up pain and pent-up sadness spiraling out, with nothing to catch her except her not-good-enough husband and a threadbare sofa.

Ted tries, however, awkwardly holds her and she knows he's wondering why she cares so much about her horrible, dead father and her horrible, cruel sisters, and she knows that no matter how much he loves her, he doesn't understand her or Narcissa or the tea parties they had when they were children and the dolls they named together and the promises they made -

_You'll always be there for me, right, Andy? I'll always be able to count on you._

- this is Narcissa's idea of vengeance, or perhaps of charity. Ted does not understand, but he tries, and that's more than her family ever gave her. Ted holds her while she sobs and sniffles and the parchment in her fingers is all-but disintegrated and completely unreadable.

Ted tries; this, more than anything, is enough to calm her.

Her father is dead, buried, forgotten. A name on a tapestry that lacks hers, a man who always called her Andromeda Marie and sometimes - sometimes, if she'd been good - would make her peppermint cocoa at Christmastime and would sit with her - just sometimes, and just her - sipping hot cocoa and telling her stories of when he was young.

Narcissa and Bellatrix and Cygnus and Druella are lost to her. Dora and Ted (and Sirius, when she remembers) are not. She releases the parchment, and clutches her husband's shirt instead.

It's enough, for now.


	3. coda

**lights** will **guide** you **home**

coda  
_(the dimmer star)_

Bellatrix is the one who tells her, comes to her home at dawn and tells her bluntly that Father is dead and that she will not do anything with the body, so it would fall to Narcissa to deal with the situation, before Bellatrix's house began to reek or rotting parents.

(In this moment, Cissy _hates_ Bella.)

Narcissa takes a deep breath and then says that she and Lucius will, of course, take care of Father's estate, that Bellatrix need not worry about it, and where, pray tell, _is_Father, Bella?

"In my living room."

(In this moment, Cissy recoils.)

So, early dawn light just softening the doorway, Narcissa leaves with Bellatrix and helps her move Father's dead and too-heavy body from her couch to the fireplace, and, then, from the fireplace to Aunt Wallburga's home, where they surely know by now. Bellatrix says she told them, but they wouldn't come help her, not even Mother. Bellatrix is furious that she's been trapped in this house with her dead father, and, while Narcissa doesn't really blame her, she also thinks that Bellatrix ought to be used to death by now.

Narcissa, ever the practical one, uses her wand to levitate Father to his bedroom and onto the bed, then pens a letter to a funeral home to begin making the proper arrangements.

Mother sits in the kitchen, sipping coffee. It was never a secret that Mother and Father never got along so well, but Narcissa thinks that if she can't find it in herself to at least pretend to mourn, than she could help make the arrangements. If nothing else, Father was a Black and deserves to go into the afterlife as any proper Black gentleman would. But Mother doesn't seem perturbed in the slightest.

Aunt Wallburga is a little shaken, but only Narcissa can tell. Idly, she wonders where Andromeda is, and if she'd come to the funeral. But then, she won't be welcome and surely she'd bring that awful Mudblood and their disgusting daughter, so there's no point in even mentioning it to her. Let her discover the facts on her own. After all, she was the one who cut ties with them.

(In this moment, Cissy thinks Black tradition is awfully cruel.)

The funeral director arrives at noon, and Narcissa explains how her sister found her Father dead upon waking this morning (she has no idea when Bellatrix found him, nor what he was doing at Bellatrix's house, nor how he died. She lies to make up the difference.) She explains that he was sick for some time, and while, _of course_, they were all heartbroken, it was better this way.

He was a good man, Narcissa lies, and we want only the best.

She sets everything up with a cruel precision that Mother would be proud of, if Mother cared to watch. Through the entire funeral, Narcissa does not cry, not once.

(Cissy sobs.)  
---  
--  
-  
(A/N: Merry Christmas, Insanguinare!)


End file.
